Parents Claim R. Kelly Has Their Daughters Trapped In An Abusive Cult

I don’t even know where to begin with this story, other than to suggest that if you’re eating and don’t have a strong stomach, you may want to come back to this one later.

For years, we’ve been talking about R Kelly’s dysfunction. His predatory and most likely illegal dating and sexual habits, his definitely illegal marriage, his pedophila. We wrote about the Village Voicepiece in where R Kelly’s decades-long history of abuse was unearthed for the world to see. It was also the place where Jim DeRogatis said poignantly, “Nobody Matters Less To Our Society Than Young Black Women.”

Last year, we outlined the highlights from the GQpiece where Kelly spoke about his own sexual abuse as a child but defended Bill Cosby against mounting allegations.

We’ve spoken publicly about his sickness on episodes of “Did Y’all See?” much to the chagrin of some of our viewers.

Still, as much research as I’ve done on R Kelly, nothing could have prepared me for what I read in the BuzzFeed article that is currently searing the discussion on the internet.

In a phrase, it’s about parents who are trying everything in their power to get their children, their daughters, released from what they describe as R Kelly’s abusive cult.

It’s written by Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago reporter who has been following the R Kelly and his dysfunction for decades now and famously wrote the piece in The Village Voice I mentioned earlier.

It starts the perspective of parents, because as you’ll soon see, they’re the only ones who can speak rationally for and about their children these days.

“Backstage at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California, on May 23, 2015, J. was thrilled that her 19-year-old daughter’s music career was going to make a major leap forward from recording demos and performing at talent shows to the chance of stardom — thanks to the help of an R&B superstar.

“When we got to go backstage with R. Kelly, we stayed there over two hours,” said J. “One-on-one with just me and my daughter and him. We went back to talk about the music. He listened to her CD. He was going to help her with her CD, and I was really impressed with him at first, because I have always been an R. Kelly fan.”

J. admitted that she’d heard about the sexual allegations that had followed R. Kelly’s name for years. But she was confident in the type of mother she is, one who is fiercely protective and devoted to helping her child achieve her dream. Both she and her husband of 22 years moved from Memphis to Atlanta to give her daughter a better chance in the music industry.

She was sure she would be able to protect her.

“In the back of our minds, we were thinking [my daughter] could be around him if I was with her,” J. said. “It didn’t really hit home. Even with the Aaliyah situation, now that I think about it, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number’ … but you don’t think about that. You grew up with the song, and you like the song.”

Now, J. and Tim are desperately trying to get their daughter to come back home. Since 2015, J. has quit her job and become an amateur detective, sharing her findings with the police and FBI, in an attempt to save her daughter. Despite all of this, nothing has changed because technically, J’s daughter is not the victim or a kidnapping. She’s not being held against her will. Instead, she lives with R Kelly willingly.